Old-fashioned

1680s pompadour dress with a fontage (the thing on top of her head)

Colonial/Georgian style dress

Barbara Villiers, copied from this painting by Sir Peter Lely.

She was a (the first?) mistress of Charles II.
I like post-restoration dresses in England. I like just thinking about it: in the decade of the 1650s under Cromwell, dress was controlled by Puritans and "morality police"; but then when the king returned to the throne in 1660, BAM! boobs are back! 

That's it for now! Happy drawings!

"Virtue Rewarded"

I'm still enjoying my new found inking tool in Adobe Illustrator! I did a drawing today of Pamela from Samuel Richardson's "Virtue Rewarded". Ooooo, robe `a la polonaise! So much want...

Started with a pencil sketch; then inked it in Illustrator; then went crazy with it in Photoshop!

 "Virtue Rewarded", written in 1740, definitely does not speak through the centuries.... very chauvinist and preachy - not to mention that Pamela has a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome. Here's the full text, and the Wiki page.

I almost made it to the end of the book, but the last 25% was... sickening. Non-stop adulation and swooning, and even after she marries Mr. B (the guy who locked her up and tried to rape her repeatedly), she refuses to stop calling him "Master" (because she likes the sound of it). There's a beautiful story of how, when the novel was first published, a whole village was so enraptured with the story that they would gather at their blacksmith's to hear it read out loud. After hearing about that, I was really interested in reading it... but there have been too many cultural changes since 1740 for me to relate at all with the characters... plus, there were too many parts where I couldn't decide if I wanted to laugh at Pamela or cry for her.

About the illustration: to be honest, it's far more colorful than how I envision the story in my head (my mental movie is full of blue and sepia), but I kinda like the irony of a colorful, modern-looking illustration for a gloomy, incredibly-old-fashioned story XD

Video Game Challenge

(right click and select "view image" for zoomed in view)

This was a fun thing to do. There's a DA group called "Design-a-Character" that gives bi-weekly challenges for things to draw, and the above image was for the most current challenge.

I've never designed a video game character, or have never even drawn a video game character, so this was definitely an experiment for me. Instead of making up my own video game, I went with WoW, and designed a new species - Naga Elf :D I completely neglected to give her any sort of gear or weapon, but it's always fun drawing a svelte female form ^_^ That goofy thing in the lower right corner is the second part of the challenge, in honor of the new movie "Wreck-It Ralph" (awesome awesome movie!!): to show what the video game character would look like in a 70s-80s arcade game. Part of the personal challenge was to stop laughing every time I looked at it...

In continuing with my self-teaching, I've now broached the barrier of learning how to ink my lines using Adobe Illustrator! I'm also continuing to hone and, indeed, just find what my style is. I love the human figure, and drawing women in particular, and I can't seem to separate myself from realism. I adore cartoony styles, though, and my admiration continually pulls me away from my comfort zones. This is where I'd love actual coaching like I'd get from a class - self-teaching myself how to develop my style is difficult! But how I'm progressing has been very very rewarding, and also free :)

I've been using another Deke McClelland book to teach myself Adobe Illustrator: "Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One". Very nice book! I also really like this youtube video that shows a super easy way to ink things on Illustrator, but you still need some knowledge of how Illustrator works in order to learn from that video.

Happy drawings!

Marble Tie-Dye Mermaid

(Right click and select "View Image" to zoom in)

For the mermaid image above, I was experimenting with brushes, different layer modes, gradients, and textures. Good fun!

Learning how to ink digitally

Continuing in my progress of learning Photoshop, I've finally busted through whatever barrier was holding me back and risked using the pen tool. And it's a wonderful tool! I think my trepidation was from reading that it's a tool that takes time to master, but indeed, I enjoy the organic looking lines that I achieved :)

Here's the before, with pencil lines:

 Here's the after, fully inked in photoshop:

The drawing was a quick sketch of a gown that I saw at the MN Opera production of "Anna Bolena" (Italianized version of the name Anne Boleyn). For those not familiar with who Anne Boleyn was, she was the second wife of the British king Henry VIII, mother of Queen Elizabeth I, and beheaded on trumped up charges but really because she couldn't produce a male heir. Very beautiful opera, and seeing as how her story was so sad in real life, you can believe that the opera was a tear jerker. Haha the man sitting next to me (who I think had come with his wife) kept nodding off, and distracting me - but this was a good thing for me, because it prevented me from releasing the full water works ^_^

This particular dress was worn by the woman playing Jane Seymour (third wife of Henry VIII). While all the dresses were beautiful, this one was particularly striking to me: she had red hair, with a green hair piece, a lavender dress, and fur sleeves.

Also, it's Thanksgiving week here in the United States! I'm very thankful for the opportunity I got this year to expand my artistic skills and pursue a new path in my life :) I hope everyone has a nice holiday!

Organizing and Regency

Starting in late August, I began to teach myself how to use Photoshop (PS5) using books, blogs, and experimenting. It has been a challenging, but fun, journey so far. I've skimmed only one-third of the two textbooks that I bought, so in no way am I through learning all I can from them... but creating will always be dynamic!

I'm spending this week organizing. I've been trying to come up with cheap, effective ways to keep my canvases and sketchbooks organized. The additional challenge is to come up with a way that also deters the cats...

In the meantime, I got a chance to draw the above girl in an empire/regency era dress. I was pretty pleased with the speed I was able to render it (1.5 hours)! Just a month ago, my speed was slower because it took a lot of time to apply the brand new techniques I'd just read about, on top of the time it took to repeatedly look things up to make sure I was getting it right. That being said, I can't wait to learn more new stuff :D

Hello, November

I hope everyone had a fun Halloween! I was the only one of my roommates at home to greet the trick-or-treaters, and for the first time in the six years that I've lived here, I ran out of candy D:

On the theme of Halloween, I did another illustration of a scene from a Terry Pratchett book, featuring two witches. From Carpe Jugulum: Agnes says, "I didn't know buoys had glass balls," but Nanny Ogg is too worried to even grin at this word bomb. The lighting was the absolute funnest to do. I realized from making it that I want to improve on my line art technique, and will see what I can do to achieve that goal. Learn, learn, learn :)

Also since my last post, one of the paintings I've done is a lounging green-haired mermaid. I can't seem to pull myself away from the subject matter of mermaids: they've taken over my brain! They're beautiful, sinuous, and colorful.... a winning trio.